Saturday, April 25, 2009

Farewell to the USAF???

Paul Kane lashes out at the good old USAF in his recent NY Times OpEd. Yes, he is right that the USAF has no major on site role in the current hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yup, they are not "sharing the pain".

Sorry, Mr Kane, but life itself is not fair. To make airpower a permanent subservient element of the other three services would be a foolish move. What we don't need today, we may very well need tomorrow. The current military services do not duplicate all the capabilities of the USAF. Perhaps we should turn the Navy over to the Army, as the Army had tremendous experience in operating floating vessels.

And, of course, the USMC's mission could easily be absorbed by the Army, which already has infantry, armor, artillery, amphibious vessels and aircraft.

I have no objection to tweaking the roles and missions of the services, especially as it pertains to aircraft operations, but there are benefits in having proponency for operations in the air in the hands of a separate service. Just as long as it isn't a strangle hold.

12 comments:

Hope the weather's nice in Greece. Not bad here in Portugal. Women and wine doing fine.

Interesting. Kane is thinking outside the National Security State "box", but is he thinking outside the currently popular COIN "box"?

Imo, Kane's operating through a COIN mindset. Which doesn't really get us anywhere.

Real national security strategy now: Of what exactly should our military forces consist? Why not go back to the threat-based analysis (bad ole days) instead of the current capabilities-based analysis/mind set.

In short, the threats are not military threats to the US at this time. . .

Torture, the stalking horse of police state is still lurking around? Funny that.

Our real problems: I would describe them more fully as a complexus of "chickens come home to roost". . . The solution, that is to recognize them as very basic political questions, a reflexion of a society in political upheaval.

What links all the current global crises is that they are all based on, are fundamentally defined as, mass conceptual failures. Ideas upon which we had based various types of very significant social/organizational action. "Theory" in other words collapsed under the weight of combined corrupt national interests. I say it thus as to reject any part of the "foreigners did us in" spiel.

"War is no longer made up of set-piece battles between huge armies confronting each other with tanks and airplanes. As we move toward a greater emphasis on rapid-response troops, the Army has tightened its physical fitness regime and the Marine Corps has introduced a physically grueling Combat Fitness Test for all members. Yet an Air Force study last year found that more than half of airmen and women were overweight and 12 percent were obese."

Get rid of the USAF? Heh. Actually, we all know this isn't going to happen. As the old law has it, once a bureaucracy is established, it won't ever go away. And the reality is there are sound reasons for maintaining a separate air force.

IMO, what's fueling these types of suggestions is an apparent lack of direction as well as traditional tone deafness on the part of the USAF. Reports that the service has had problems maintaining strict control of its nukes—the area where the service absolutely must shine—are in fact frightening. Relief of the two senior leaders does little to mitigate the sense that there's something amiss.

The USAF has also proven to be even more tone deaf than usual in its approach to the F22 and other aerial platforms. If I'd been president or SecDef, more heads than the SecAF and the CofS would have rolled after the shenanigans some of the generals played. The old jokes about the Air Force being a division of Lockheed Martin strike a little too close to home.

And then there are the reports that the USAF Academy has been taken over by evangelicals who've taken upon themselves to proselytize their young charges regarding religious matters. There are also indications that the cancer has spread to the active Air Force as well, leading one to ask, "WTF?".

Couple the insistence on the part of some vocal generals that wars can be won by airpower alone with the casualties amongst friendlies in Afghanistan and the picture isn't all that pretty.

The USAF has always had an image problem with the other services. The cheap shot by Kane regarding overweight airmen is a manifestation of a perception that Air Force people are really just civilians in uniform. Expect more attacks so long as they look like they don't have their shit together.

What might make the USAF look and perform better? Well, a serious look at roles and missions wouldn't hurt. Maybe the service just has too much on its plate. A good place to start would lie in revisiting the Key West Agreement. CAS has never worked as well as it should and it may just be that given OPCON, the Army can make it work better.

Seydlitz is right about Kane's COIN mindset and how it does little good in considering appropriate national security strategies. However, Kane and those like him are valuable in that they shine the spotlight on the serious deficiencies in our current national defense establishment. As he suggests, conducting hard-nosed threat-based analyses, rather than fighting to keep things as they've always been, is the only way we're going to get to where we need to be. Our current system really doesn't work. It's time to think seriously about our sacred cows.

"Perhaps we should turn the Navy over to the Army, as the Army had tremendous experience in operating floating vessels.

And, of course, the USMC's mission could easily be absorbed by the Army, which already has infantry, armor, artillery, amphibious vessels and aircraft.I know, I was only in the Marines for a couple of months, and thankfully for that too; But I still hold a special place in the cockles of me heart for the Marines, so here is my proposal:

The Golden Rule, he who has the gold makes the rules, so lets turn the Navy over to the Marines, since the Navy is pretty much the taxi to the Marines Passenger, and as we all know in that relationship the Passenger is the one with the "gold."Next, lets turn the Army over to the Marines as well, because lets face it the Army Rangers? glorified Marine grunts, Green Beret's, just another Force Recon team with cute little chapeus.The Air Force can remain the Air Force because the boys in blue strike such a nice contrast to the Marine Green.

Okay, enough of that crap...how bout we get to the real issue here and that is the Defense Industry hinted at by Publius.

I was told if you ever want to know where someone's prorities are at always, always look at their check book.Guys, the US Defense Industry sucks more money out of the US economy than every parasite known to man can suck blood from a our species.Our intellectual prowess is locked up in the Defense Industry, our money is locked up in the Defense Industry, and our government officials are locked up in the Defense Industry.Sorry Mr. Kane, sweet thoughts, nice comments here too, but herein is the one thing that will detemine what happens to these branches of our Military and that is the Defense Industry.Deal with that first, then you can remodel the military, but if anyone tries to remodel the military independently of the Defense complex...good luck because all their bought little drones in Government will be wailing like banshees about the end of the US as we know it.

Think along the lines of Rush on cocaine with a gripe about the liberals...you get the idea.

This has always been a sore spot with me ever since I was a grunt medic. Given our lack of peer foes the most dangerous thing on the battlefield to an American infantry unit tends to be its own CAS. The A-10s usually do a decent job, but I never trusted and still don't the "F/A"-16s and -18s. I couldn't agree more with Publius that tac air should be given to the Army just as the USMC has its own CAS.

But to my mind the larger problem is that the USAF has been and still is stuck in a dangerously insular strategic mindset. It has never really given up on the frikkin' "victory through airpower" crap that Douhet and Mitchell and the other interwar pie-in-the-sky theorists came up with. It was horseshit then, the strategic ombing campaigns pretty much proved it horseshit in the Big One (and the AARs were effectively suppressed to keep the strategic bombing leg of the triad in operation) and the heavy bomber mafia has been working their ass off to keep anyone from looking seriously at the viability of manned stategic bombers in an age of cruise missles.

Likewise the fighter mafia on the issue of technical superiority. The question of "What does an F-22/F-35 fight?" never seems to arise. Why is that? We're told that the F-15 airframe is ancient and failing - why was the F-15 production line shut down in favor of the F-22? Why replace a viable airframe with one costing twice as much or more (i.e. purchasing half as many aircraft)?

So IMO Kane is asking the wrong questions here. Instead of looking at the wars were fighting and wondering what good the USAF is doing, he COULD ask why the USAF is allowed to set it own priorities for R&D and accessions, manning and equipment outfitting, and strategic planning.

The Key West Agreement, ISTM, has become an excuse to let each service determine where it fits in the US geopolitical/strategic plan. And excuse the national command authority (the NSC and the Joint Chiefs) from coming up with an ACTUAL plan, and then requiring the services to configure themselves to make it work.

One classical attribute of empires in senesence is the arteriosclerosis of military thought. The gladius and scutum were good enough for grandpa, all they need is tweaking, not a complete 360 analysis.

I see an Adrianople somewhere in the future. When and where, dunno. But as Seydlitz points out, Kane is at least thinking outside the box. I get the sense that a lot of thinking in the services today is about trying to get inside whatever box they like, rather than determining whether the box works or is the right box...

But Chief, you're missing the bigger picture about CAS, and all the hoo-aahh stuff...those F16's, 18's, and whatever 2's that are being bandied about now are jobs for 'muricans, which translates into votes for senators and representatives who can get their picture taken next to one of them fine instruments of violence which will be dispensed with their communiques to their electorate about how they, and they alone are providing the jobs that is feeding their households.

Seriously, it's really all about the money, and little to do with what our military's current needs are.

Sheerah: I'll agree that the $$ involved in "defense contracts" often drives weapons programs - and as a result, strategic planning - rather than the other way around.

But the thing is that the companies can make money building F-15s or F-22s. So if the USAF had a geostrategic vision consistent with actual national security needs, rather than "we need a big, cool bomber...because we've always had big, cool bombers and if we didn't we couldn't bomb stuff..." they might insist that their suppliers build more B-52's. Or FB-111s. Or something maybe completely different consistent with the likely reality that huge waves of manned bombers are as militarily useful as Swiss pikes.

But a big part of what I see as the problem is that the USAF REALLY WANTS to fight the Battle over Germany and Japan in the same way that the Navy wants to fight the Battle of Midway.

Both fixations result in the purchase and operations of relatively large numbers of strategically questionable platforms - heavy bombers and aircraft carriers.

So what I'm saying isn't the exact same as Kane - abolish the USAF. But I am agreeing that the USAF and to some extent the USN are operating under increasingly unrealistic strategic mindsets. The history of military organizations suggests that short of a catastrophic defeat they will be unlikely to question those mindsets.

In a vibrant polity an outside force - the Congress, DoD, the Sect'y of Defense - would reach in and shake them up, get them thinking again. But in our - as you corrctly point out - massive, somnolent, complacent, lucrative and corrupt MICC, this is really unlikely.

Just to say that Kane's "best" was best imo in describing his mindset. I have a high regard for the USAF, especially their Humint collection which I worked with rather closely during the bad ole days. Great ops; knew their stuff; very professional. So keep the Air Force just for their Humint if nothing else, in order to keep the Army on their toes . . .

I'll throw out this article by Jeff Huber since he talks numbers and specific weapon system types, he's also got a Navy background which makes his new Navy interesting . . .

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/apr/06/00025/

I thought the comment as to seven carrier battlegroups pretty convincing, and the staying with the F-16? I mean what exactly is the threat?

At this point we get once again to the real issue/problem, that dealing with basic political questions. . .

I saw the show last evening. I think it is an AF attempt at showing they can do CAS. The problem, are the platforms (2). They don't carry much in the way of ordnance, and, as such, are a waste against dispersed Talib infantry. They are good for assaulting Talib/AQ conventions (Wedding Parties held in walled compounds), motorized convoys, etc..

If these new toys were to be dedicated to work in concert with the AC-130H/U Gunships (in adequate numbers), with the duo providing positive coverage of all coalition field posts, operations and such, it would be a feather in their cap.

Reduce field posts, let them come to you on terrain favorable to you (Gettysburg springs to mind). You need the coverage, though.

Well now that the AF, and its congresscritters got their requests for more f-22 zapped, why don't they try to get more of this dynamic duo funded. It helps the boys n girls on the ground. Who knows, maybe one day, there will be a common sense expedition launched that can highlight the AF's Raison d'Être, Iraq and Bananastan's buried riches notwithstanding. It would be nice if Globo World Paid the sugar meister $$$$$ for safeguarding the immediate future's commodities.